“Syme was not only dead, he was abolished, an unperson.”

Pop psychologizing “Silly Boy”

If you haven’t heard Rihanna’s new single “Silly Boy,” I am guessing that you will hear it at every GAP/Teen Choice Awards/Top 40 Radio/high school dance in the near future.

In the wake of the Chris Brown alleged abuse, Rihanna has emerged with this bouncy, cathartic brush-off of a “silly boy” who cannot treat her properly, with a Lady-Gaga-infused Euro dance beat.

While I am not one to judge the behavior of battered women, I fail to hear the song as anything other than a shot back at the charts. Although it’s easy to read this as some sort of “diss track” of Chris Brown, it doesn’t work for me on that level:

Cause you had a good girl, good girl, girl
Thats a keeper, k-k-k-k-keeper
You had a good girl, good girl but
Didn’t know how to treat her, t-t-t-t-treat her (treat her)
So silly boy get out my face (my face)
Why do you like the way regrets taste?
So silly boy get out my hair my hair
(Get outta here)
No I don’t want you no more (get outta here)

Again, I cannot judge what was going through Rihanna’s mind when she decided on singing this song. For me, however, the song has no pathos, and even with the context that we now have, seems less like a “diss track” and more like a concealment of emotion. This doesn’t mean that I expect a river of tears and “Behind the Wall.” I do, however, hope that domestic abuse spawns songs other than upbeat “it’s-all-in-the-rearview-mirror” pop tunes that ignore the obvious subtext.